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The "Medical Equipment" exhibit at the Cape Fear Museum makes that abundantly clear. The small exhibit, on display through Jan. 12, offers a glimpse into what might have been seen at doctors' offices and hospitals from 1865 to the present.

Some instruments, such as a blood pressure kit from 1945, have barely changed. The "blood pressure measurer" came in a wooden box then, but the arm cuff and the bulb and valve look very similar to ones used today. And there doesn't appear to have been any major developments in the reflex-testing hammer since about 1960.

A medicine chest filled with glass bottles and stoppers from the 1880s, however, looks very different from the plastic bottles with child-proof lids that we see today.

There are also oddities in the glass case. An "electric weight loss stimulator" from 1958 straddles the line between medicine and health fad, and a dental oven from 1940 makes you wonder what the dentist was cooking up.

Some of the instruments are downright scary. The names alone are frightening – skull punch, spine cutter, surgical saw. The rudimentary instruments from the 1930s through the 1960s look like wood shop tools or horror movie props.

There are other equally disturbing tools. They don't have jagged teeth or razor-sharp blades, but their intended use is enough to make us squirm.

Included in the exhibit is a nasal douche, complete with display box, from 1900.

Far more alarming are the anal speculum and a box of Young's "Improved" Rectal Dilators from 1930.

Amy Kilgore Mangus, public relations specialist at the museum, pointed out that the most cringe-inducing objects are on the top shelf, high enough so that the toddlers won't be asking, "What's that for, Daddy?"

"It's our chance to get a little edgy," Mangus said.

The exhibit also features advancements in birth control from the 1960s to the 21st century.

Mangus said the museum had more than 2,000 medical implements in its collection to choose from for the exhibit. The display also includes photos of Wilmington area hospitals.